


The Little Things

by sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Animal Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Distressed Shelrock, M/M, Married Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, POV Mycroft Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 07:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6648250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“help.”</p><p>Sherlock is on his knees in middle of the rain-slick street, signature coat a soaked weight about his shoulders, rain dripping from the ends of sodden curls, and into his eyes.  His voice breaks as he looks up at his brother, eyes full, pleading.  He’ll be forty years old in a few months, and he looks all of four.  “help him.  please.”</p><p>“There’s nothing to be done, Sherlock.  Come away and let someone else deal with it.”</p><p>“Please!”</p><p>“Look at it.  You know better, little brother.  He’s not got long for this world.  Come.  There’s no use lingering about in a busy street.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Things

**Author's Note:**

> There is animal death in this story, but it is a stray, and not the pet of any of the characters. I mention this, because I know it can be a very large emotional trigger for some people.

“ _help._ ”

Sherlock is on his knees in middle of the rain-slick street, signature coat a soaked weight about his shoulders, rain dripping from the ends of sodden curls, and into his eyes.  His voice breaks as he looks up at his brother, eyes full, pleading.  He’ll be forty years old in a few months, and he looks all of four.  “ _help him.  please._ ”

“There’s nothing to be done, Sherlock.  Come away and let someone else deal with it.”

“Please!”

“Look at it.  You know better, little brother.  He’s not got long for this world.  Come.  There’s no use lingering about in a busy street.”

Sherlock’s eyes widen with what almost looks like shock, and then narrow again into disgust.  “You—you won’t…?  Well, fine.  Fine then.  Fine!  Just—just leave.  Just get out!  Just—FUCK OFF!!”  Uncharacteristically coarse, and ferocious, even for Sherlock, but there’s no reasoning with him when he gets like this, and Mycroft doesn’t know how to deal with this side of his brother.  It’s something he’s never understood—or is even capable of understanding, he wagers. 

But John Watson is here, he’s dipping his head down, as he exits the cab beside them, pulling his collar up against the rain.  He comes to stand beside them both, stares down at Sherlock, shivering with cold (and something else), cradling the bloody, injured, stray puppy in his large hands. 

John rakes at his wet hair.  “Shit…” he mutters under his breath.  But he gets down on his knees beside Sherlock, and he cups his doctor’s/soldier’s/carer’s hands together, he leans in and murmurs something softy in Sherlock’s ear, and Sherlock droops against him, places the squirming, squealing, suffering mound of fur onto his husband’s waiting lap, without a word.

It’s hopeless.  It’s dying, and there truly is nothing to be done, but this is why John Watson is better suited to keeping Sherlock’s heart than Mycroft has ever been, no matter how hard he has tried.  John seems to understand this thing in Sherlock, this hook that makes him instantly overwhelmed with the pain of small, helpless things.

John wraps the animal gently, but a little more snugly in Sherlock’s scarf.  “Pet his head, Love.  He liked that.”

Sherlock strokes the small, golden head with one long finger, leans down, eyes unabashedly overflowing now, tears mingling with the rain on his cheeks, eye’s red-rimmed with horror and pain.  Each squeal the animal makes seems to visibly pass through Sherlock’s body in a tense shudder.  But his gentle touch does seem to calm the thing.  He coos quietly to it, in deep, soothing tones. 

Mycroft can only catch small snippets of what he says above the sound of blaring horns, their cabbie’s shouts, the rush of the constant, driving rain.  He speaks to the creature as though it were a frightened child.  He says the words he no doubt wished had been whispered in his ear all those years ago, when he was just a child, and dying—dying inside.

Somewhere along the way, Sherlock has become a better man that Mycroft will ever be.  John Watson is partially responsible for that.   Though Sherlock always was a sensitive child; he has a heart as well as a head, and perhaps there is something to that, after all…

The canine is quieting now, it’s breath a laboured rattle.  It twitches a few times, and goes still.  Mycroft sees Sherlock suck in a ragged breath. 

Sherlock has always been abnormally interested in dead things, but he’s never been able to bear the dying itself.  This is his nightmare, and his hell.  But, his husband has gentled it somehow.  He’s taken the sharp edges off, around the corners.  It is a physician’s art, Mycroft supposes.  One sees so much of death, you learn to accept it, you learn to see it for what it is—an inevitability, a thing you are many times helpless to stop, but can at least attempt to soften.

John wraps the dead animal up fully, tucks it up next to his chest, and they head back to the cab.  Their driver is shouting at them in Pashto.  It’s a language Mycroft is only passingly familiar with, but from what he can catch, it is clear the man does not want them to bring the corpse into his cab.  John takes a step forward, says a few, firm, clipped words back in the man’s own language, and they are allowed to enter the vehicle again, after all.  They set off into the encroaching dusk.

Sherlock is trembling, hands shaking, and he is rubbing his palms up and down, up and down over the soaked legs of his trousers.

“We’re going back to the flat.  We’ll talk over the case tomorrow.”  John is making a statement.  He doesn’t want Mycroft’s permission or thoughts on the matter.  It is what it is.

“Yes.  Fine.”  Mycroft texts his PA to meet him at the flat with the car.  He’s had quite enough of cabs for one afternoon.

Sherlock stops rubbing his thighs, and takes to bouncing his left leg up and down instead.  It’s maddening, and Mycroft itches to reach out and settle him, but he knows better after all these years. 

Sherlock is teasing the edges of the bloody bundle in John’s hands, with his pinky.  John looks down.  “Do you want to hold him?”

Sherlock nods, and John places the dead animal in Sherlock’s lap.  Only then does Sherlock go perfectly still.  “It’s warm,”  he murmurs.

“It smells,” Mycroft clarifies.  John glares at him, and he turns away, and stares out at the street lamps slowly flickering on outside the windows.

“It’s what happens when you die,” Sherlock states hollowly.  “I suppose I’ll need a new scarf.”

“We’ll clean him up when we get back to the flat,” John promises.  “We’ll clean him up, and do something proper.  It’s better than him being left out in the street.”

Sherlock just nods, pushes the scarf back away from the animals cooling body, and strokes a finger over one silky ear.  Over, and over again.

As they turn onto Baker St., John reaches over, and covers the thing’s head with the scarf again.  “Almost home.  Are you okay to take him, I need to pay the cabbie.”

“I’ll pay the fare,” Mycroft states.

John just nods.

By the time Mycroft has fulfilled his promise, paid the fare, and then ducked into the black government sedan waiting on the curb, John and Sherlock are huddled together by the front door of the flat.  The grim, sodden bundle pressed between their bodies. Sherlock is staring down at it, saying something, rather vehemently, but John angles in close, murmurs things that seem to soothe, and comfort.  Sherlock’s shoulders shake briefly, and then square up again, and John reaches up to thumb the dampness off his cheek.

“The office, Randal.  I’ll be late tonight.  Don’t wait ‘round.  I’ll have one of the others bring me home, when I’m ready.”

“Yes, Sir.”

They pull away from the curb, and Mycroft turns a little.  He watches John Watson usher his little brother into the warmth, and safety of the dingy, homely little flat they share, hand resting on the small of his back, waiting, locking the door securely behind them, shutting out the world that has so often been difficult for Sherlock to bear.  He feels a profound rush of gratitude—and relief.

It’s the little things—sometimes it is just the tiniest of things that make all the difference, and John Watson, that small, unassuming, army doctor, who slipped almost by chance into his brother’s orbit all those years ago, has become the biggest, the most significant _small thing_ to ever have crawled beneath his brother’s skin and make a home there.

Finally—finally, Sherlock is safe.


End file.
